RW Rabid cousin...Again, You won't believe this one!

[serryjw]

It si truly frightening...REALLY need your help on this one!
quote.....
First, all of the West's intelligence services, including the US's, British, Russian, etc. going back to Clinton, suggested that Iraq had WMDs. So, Bush was acting on the most reliable sources available. The information may have been inaccurate, but it is just Democratic pabulum to insist that he "lied." Second, the fact that we did not find massive WMD stockpiles is not in itself conclusive evidence that they did not exist. The possibility exists that they were buried, transferred out of Iraq, etc. Third, whether WMDs have been found or not, Iraq and the world is certainly better off with Saddam displaced, just as it would be with the radical, anti-US, anti-democracy government of in Iran being taken down. I'd always rather do the right thing for the wrong reasons than vice versa. Fourth, whether Saddam was the principal instigator of 9-11 or not, misses the point. He and his regime were state-sponsored terrorists in their own right, supporting suicide bombers, fomenting instability in the region, genocidally murdering his own people, etc., etc. He deserved to be deposed by the world community, and any punishment short of torture is too good for him. Fifth, if you believe that we invaded Iraq just to get their oil, you are just spouting more anti-American, self-hating American rhetoric. If that's the case, we should just invade Saudi Arabia and call it a day. They would be much easier to conquer. Six -- Wow, we've killed 1000s of innocent Iraqis! As the saying goes, "you've got to break eggs to make an omelet." Innocent people tragically get killed in almost all wars. Was WWII immoral because innocents were killed? Why do you conveniently ignore the half million or so that Saddam and his regime killed of their own people? If you wish to be against all wars and killing, just label yourself a pacifist and be done with it. At least then, you will have a morally consistent position to argue from. Seven, it is a truly incredible, incomprehensible position to believe that Iran (or North Korea) with nuclear weapons (regardless of how they came to the technology) makes the world a safer place. That's just shear lunacy!

Repeat after me: With whatever blemishes real or imagined that the US may have, it is fundamentally the best country the world has ever seen. You need to stop berating your own country just to score political points. You may disagree with Bush, but the problem for you and yours is that you actually hate America and that you are so ideologically entrenched that you are actually willing to see America hurt just to see the Republicans diminished. As an exercise of your fair and balanced thinking, sit down and write out a list of all the truly great things America has done for the world. You should be able to come up with at least 20 in the first minute or so. If you can't, you should question your intellectual objectivity.

PS: I sleep most soundly at night knowing that if the entire world were like the US, humanity as a whole would be much closer to its ideal of peace, prosperity, etc.
end quote.....

[LisaM]

1. Let's see...who was in power when America did all these great things?

Certainly not the Republicans.

[coalition_unwilling]

2. I don't hate America, but I hate imperialism, which is really all

the * agenda is, under cover of some Madison Avenue slogans like "War on Terror".

[Benhurst]

3. Does his hospital let him use a computer, or are he and the

other inmates forced to write with crayons?

[pooja]

4. I think if you want the world to embrace true democratic ideals... you

must lead by example. It was the founders of this great nation that stood up to imperialism and fought the fight for freedom and then created the constitution. The Iraqi's did not combine with force strength and overthrow their govt and institutionalize a constitution with democratic ideals. It was the United States that invaded the country, usurped the thrown and now has become its rulers.

There are many dictatorships that the United States supports. If America was truly fighting the good fight, we would not be trading our country away to China.

[The Sleeper]

5. Ignorance may be bliss, but.....

It also seems to involve a whole lot of hard work these days for some folks.

That, and Triple strength Kool-Aid....

[sinkingfeeling]

6. I'd not take him on point by point, but use his last sentence ...

So, you want the entire world to spend all of its resources on weapons of mass destruction? You want the world to allow disease and hunger to kill 30,000 children a day? You want the whole world to worship 'shopping' and 'consumerism' above culture and arts? You want the world to cut down the trees, dam up the rivers, and build big boxes on acres of pavement? You contradict yourself when you believe Iran and/or North Korea shouldn't have nuclear power, but you think the entire world should crave as much armament as possible (to be like us) and use it 'pre-emptively, whenever they don't like what another country is doing. You want the entire world to be as aggressive as us? You want the rest of the world to be as miserly as we are with aid to those in distress?

It is because I love America, that I am free to disagree with it's (GOP) foreign policy of 'shoot first and ask questions later'. No, I don't hate America, just right-wing, Neocon fascists, who happen to be running her into the ground (financially and morally) right now.

[serryjw]

11. I have posted about 6 threads from RW rabid cousin

I agree with your recommendation. The alternative would be continue to get into a 'spitting contest'. WE just envision a better world with no death and destruction......unless it's absolutely necessary

[NewJeffCT]

7. On Item 1

Prior to 1998, Saddam may have had WMD, but, they were destroyed in one of Clinton's supposed "wag the dog" moments. Anything that remained would have long since degraded into harmless sludge by 2002. Mohammed El-Baradei, the head of the IAEA, said that Iraq had not re-started its nuclear program... while Scott Ritter, the chief UN weapons inspector in Iraq in the 1990s, said that the piece above about degrading into harmless sludge, and agreed that Iraq had no WMD. Oh - by the way - El-Baradei won a Nobel prize. (oh, and many of those quotes from Democrats circulating the internet about Saddam having WMD were either from 1998 or earlier, or were based on the selectively edited intel described in my next paragraph)

The intelligence that was sent to the Congress by Team Bush was a "Cliff Notes" version of the actual intelligence that managed to edit out all of the qualifications placed upon the claims of Iraqi WMD.

The fact that Bush knowingly & willingly lied is also not in dispute, as evidenced by the Downing St. Memo. The Memo stated that said the facts were being fixed around the policy to support invasion, and that Bush had long before decided to invade Iraq.

That is item 1.

[trotsky]

8. "The possibility exists that they were buried, transferred out of Iraq..."

or even carried away by the Easter Bunny in his magic egg basket. I mean, we just really can't say FOR SURE that none of those happened, right? :sarcasm:

The Kool-Aid is mighty strong.

[EstimatedProphet]

9. It must suck to be related to a subhuman...

This is addressed to the author of this vile crap, not to the OP.

1) So why is it that both Powell and Rice came out in the summer of 2001 as saying that Iraq did not have any WMD's?

2) This is the kind of argument that was shown for what it was in The Crucible. The accused man is standing trial for witchcraft, and one of the accusers makes the claim that he might have had a demonic puppet for ritual use - not that it was found, but that he might have had it - but it wasn't found, and the court used that as evidence of his guilt. This argument can be disproved with the same statement: "I might have had a five-legged purple dragon too, but you didn't find that either!"

3) Is Iraq really better off? Do the people without electricity and water still thank the US for their better life? Do the people being tortured for no reason thank thier lucky stars that they are being tortured by Americans, and not by Iraqis? Do the dead sleep better for being killed by Americans?

4) Every one of these points is currently under debate. I doubt the value of any of them. Prove it.

5) We would never invade Saudi Arabia because they give us everything we want. Iraq wasn't playing ball with us anymore.

6) Your lack of humanity is sickening. I think you're a threat to the US. Maybe I should just kill you for the sake of goodness and decency.

7) What the hell does Iran have to do with this? And while we're at it, what is so bad about using diplomacy first? It's worked quite well for a long time.

I agree that the US is a wonderful country. That's why it pains me to see it bend to the will of sick sadistic racist deathlovers like you. You're a complete piece of shit. You have no value to the US. We would be better off without you.

I don't hate America. I hate you. You're unAmerican. And I can't sleep soundly at night knowing subhuman thugs like you are walking around planning their takeovers of other countries just to get the chance to torture and kill more foreigners.

[NewJeffCT]

10. On Item 2

1) The original Bush-appointed team that was in charge of finding WMD in Iraq did not find any, and said they were never there. If there were WMD there, but they had been removed, there would still have been at least some evidence left behind. David Kay, the lead inspector, said, "we were all wrong," if I recall. (well, not all of us - see my Item 1 post on Scott Ritter & Mohammed El-Baradei!)

2) The 2nd Bush-appointed team also came to the same conclusion as David Kay. Charles Duerfler said that any WMD programs had ended at least several years before (gulp, could it have been in 1998?)

There have been recent reports as well, out of Australia, that the US interfered with the quest to find WMD in Iraq. Is there any reason other than trying to cover up the lie that there were no WMD? And, why kick Hans Blix and his team out of Iraq before they were done if there was a possibility WMD could be found? Could it be that they knew there were none?

[serryjw]

24. Enjoy the prior emails

that were posted a few days ago

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2068143

[NewJeffCT]

26. I guess I will say that...

your cousin didn't just sip the kool-aid, I think he's got a kool-aid IV hooked up to his arm!

[Ezlivin]

12. "if the entire world were like the US"....

Everyone would be the world's Number One arms dealer?

Everyone would imprison more people per capita than any other country?

Everyone would dump more CO² into the atmosphere than everyone else and then ignore the Kyoto Protocol?

Wow....

[NewJeffCT]

13. On Item 3

A paper tiger Iraq with Saddam holding it together is better than a government of radical Islamic fundamentalists aligned with Iran that is in the midst of a civil war?

Most of the mass graves in Iraq were from the time that Saddam was an ally of the US... or, from after the first Gulf War where we encouraged the Kurds to rise up against Saddam, only to abandon them to their doom.

Sure, Saddam was a bad motherfucker... but, there were probably 30 dictators around the world that are just as bad, if not worse.

[anarch]

14. nothing you can say to people like this will help them

Sorry, but I've really come to believe that. I used to think that there would be some use in trying to have a discourse, but all they do is parrot the talking points they've been given--much as they malign the people on the left for spouting party-line "pabulum", these kind of people don't actually think about what they're pushing, they just know Rush or whoever said it so they buy into it. Anyway, no amount of reasoning will change their minds. Any opposing, or even slightly divergent viewpoint is anathema to them, and they just tune it out.


I'll just take this last point of his, though: "Six -- Wow, we've killed 1000s of innocent Iraqis! As the saying goes, "you've got to break eggs to make an omelet." Innocent people tragically get killed in almost all wars. Was WWII immoral because innocents were killed?" -- You've got to break eggs to make an omelet? What the fuck? I think, for one thing, it's at least tens of 1000's, for another thing this is not a fucking "war", it is an invasion and occupation, and to answer the final question, yes, it was equally immoral when Germany invaded Poland in 1939, thus starting WWII.

But then again I have indeed labeled myself a pacifist, so I guess your cousin would have already dismissed anything I might have to say as a matter of course.

Then again, I suppose I have a similar reaction to the warmongers. You may just as well go try to have a discussion with an eggplant as talk to this fellow, if you ask me.

[paulk]

15. there's truth in some of this - the problem is your cousin draws

the wrong conclusions or just plain ignores some things...

Since there hadn't been weapon inspectors inside Iraq in 4 years, intelligence services didn't know if Iraq had started up any of it's WMD programs again. That's why a lot of Democrats voted for the IWR - as a way to get weapons inspectors back in and therefore ascertain if Saddam was, indeed, a threat. Bush ignored the evidence from the weapons inspectors that there wasn't any WMD and went ahead and attacked. The Bush admin. also distorted intelligence it received, or manipulated the info to make the case for war. The Bush junta, in short, lied both about what it knew and what it didn't know.

Your cousin's 2nd point is true only if you accept the fact that you can't prove a negative. I mean, I can't conclusively prove that little green men don't live on the moon, either. Just because I can't prove it doesn't mean it's true.

3rd point - we are a long way from knowing if the world is a better place because Saddam Hussein was displaced, or even if Iraq is a better place. Ask your cousin what proof he has of this "certainty". Doing the "wrong" thing for the "right" reasons is perhaps a more applicable description than your cousin's...

4th point - yes, Saddam was a bad man. The world is full of bad men. If it is the role of our country to be the world's policeman, we (and your cousin) had better be prepared for an endless war. And it would also be nice if your cousin could come up with a way to pay for it, too.

5th point - well, I, personally, don't believe that we invaded Iraq just for their oil - although BushCo no doubt viewed the money to be made rebuilding Iraq's oil industry as a bonus. However, I don't see how believing that makes one a "self-hating anti-American".

6th point - hmmmm.... Iraq isn't an omelet. Bush isn't making an omelet with those eggs - he's just throwing them at a wall. And the "Why do you conveniently ignore the half million or so that Saddam and his regime killed of their own people" is the usual right wing non sequitur - it's not relevant to the argument.

I agree with your cousin's 7th point. I don't think the spread of nuclear technology to anyone makes the world a safer place.


-------------------


Last point - to equate criticism of your country with being unpatriotic is the lowest argument there is. To quote Samuel Johnson - "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel".

[warrens]

16. No, we hate Bush because he is ruining the "fundamentally best country"

Bush is a lying, incompetent, fascist thug. Germany was a pretty cool place until Hitler came along. It had its right-wing kooks, but after getting their country into war after war and bankrupting the joint, they were on the run. Then came Hitler...and the rest is history.

[noneofmybusiness]

17. I don't mean to be rude or anti-american but

What are all these things that America has done for the world?

I thought America entered WWII because of Pearl Harbour, to prevent the USSR becoming too powerful if they took over Europe and to get the German nuclear and rocket technology. The US could have joined the war sooner, but chose to profit from selling weapons to the British and only started fighting once victory was pretty much assured.

I'm fairly sure America didn't invent freedom or democracy, and other countries would probably have come up with mixing peanut butter and chocolate eventually.

I know this is off the point of the thread, but it seems to crop up in a lot of these types of posts where a RWer is listing reasons why the US can invade countries willy-nilly and it never seems to be challenged.

Of course, I'm not saying the US **should** do lot's of great things for the rest of the world, but what are these great things they keep telling us about?

This is a genuine question. Can you help me out?

edit: meant to reply to OP

[noneofmybusiness]

19. thought so

[EstimatedProphet]

20. I'd question part of your argument

I'm not one to flag-wave instead of think. I am aware that the rest of the world exists, not like the mouthbreather that wrote the original message about how America is so much better than everyone else. However, I have to take issue with at least one thing that you wrote:

The US wasn't rolling in the bucks because of the WWII lend-lease program. We didn't wait to get into the war because we were making money off of selling arms to Britain and Russia. We didn't make much money doing it, and we did that to hold off Hitler in those areas until the populace was ready to go to war. And, victory was far from assured by 1942.

[noneofmybusiness]

23. You're right about the lend-lease terms

I've read some more about this now and found that the terms were very good for Britain.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4757181.stm
In fact the loan is not yet paid off and the interest rate is very low so still good for Britain.

I am taking issue with the OPs cousin and his right wing meme that America only ever acts as a benevolent force.

[EstimatedProphet]

30. Right. I understand that, and please don't think I thought otherwise.

[Spirochete]

18. Interesting...

Saddam killing 1000's of innocent Iraqis=an outrage, a reason for war

US killing 1000's of innocent Iraqis="you've got to break eggs to make an omelet"

[EstimatedProphet]

21. Brown people can't kill brown people - only we can do that.

[OregonDem]

22. Before the war the inspectors looking for WMD said that they didn't exist.

Why would Bush used old info to justify the war and ignore the latest intel? Could it be that old intel was no longer accurate because the inspectors were actually doing a good job over the past decade destroying Iraq's illegal weapons? Didn't the war actually prove that? Remember how they were all cocky saying that the inspectors were like the blind Mr. Magoo and that the military would show the inspectors the stockpiles once they had taken over Iraq.

[bullwinkle428]

25. So Iraqis are just eggs that need to be broken?

:grr:

[kiki]

27. "Shear lunacy"?

Like when a crazy person shaves the wool off a sheep?

Succinct responses:

"You are my cousin, but you are an imbecile and/or an uncaring, sadistic asshole."

"Ya know they need lots of help making that omelette, so hurry up and enlist, chickenshit."

"Fuck off."

[treestar]

28. And yet he is perfectly willing to "see America hurt" to see the

Democrats dimished or the Republicans augmented.

RWers are such hypocrites.

[genie_weenie]

29. Where to begin? Let's state with the root problem

which is living in a nice Suburban home has allowed the majority of Americans to think incorrectly about War.

America is the greatest country, unless you happen to an Iraqi from 2003 & beyond, a Vietnamese in the 1960s, a black person from 1776 till today, an American Indian in the 1800s, a downed American pilot in a Hiroshima prison cell on Aug 6 1945, a dairy farmer in Dresden in 1945, a coal miner in Ludlow 1914, a World War One Veteran in 1932, the Captain of the USS Indianapolis during your court-martial after WWII, an Anti-War advocate in Montana in 1917, a student at Kent State in 4 May 1970.

I could go on but I'm only preaching to the converted here at DU.

The deeper issue goes beyond any politician (of either party) and one to fundamental brain-washing. The majority of Americans have been conditioned to identify self with the State, to bow to authority, to believe in the inherent goodness of the elected officials and the History of the US, that when one questions those CORE beliefs, you are ATTACKING the soul of the person who has allowed themselves to be fooled into believing them.

And most people will fight to the death to defend that which they have allowed themselves to believe.